Among the nearly 165,000 Americans who've died from COVID-19, at least 900 are frontline healthcare workers, according to an interactive database unveiled on Tuesday by the Guardian and Kaiser Health News (KHN).

Lost on the Frontline is a partnership between the two newsrooms that implied to count, verify, and memorialize U.S. frontline physicians, nurses, clinical support staff and cleaners who died during the pandemic.

Health care workers are extremely susceptible due to their close contact with patients with the coronavirus. As coronavirus cases surge in the United States and months-long shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE), such as N-95 masks, gowns and gloves persist, the country's healthcare workers are among the highest-risk groups for infection and repeatedly facing life-threatening circumstances, notably in the southern and western states.

So far, the news organizations have identified 922 healthcare workers who reportedly died from the COVID-19.

Over 50 journalists from the Guardian, KHN, and journalism schools have worked together and spent months investigating their deaths to identify they died from the coronavirus. The healthcare workers were found working on the frontlines in close contact with the coronavirus patients or working in places where they were exactly being treated. The circumstances of their deaths were also investigated.

Of the 167 workers who died from the coronavirus so far, 62 percent were people of color, according to Kaiser Health News and the Guardian. The coronavirus has disproportionately hit black and brown Americans, and African Americans, in particular, are dying from it at disproportionately high rates compared with other ethnicities.

According to the news agencies, roughly 40 percent were nurses, who account for the most deaths so far.

Some of these deaths were preventable. The risk was increased due to poor preparation, government missteps, and an overburdened healthcare system. Nearly one-third of those who died faced shortages of protective gear. And about half of the dead were over age 60, the news organizations said.

The database is especially timely, the news organizations said in a release, as the Trump administration decided in July to divert hospital data about COVID-19 from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention so administration officials could access it first, which reportedly could make critical data about the COVID-19 cases and deaths less transparent.

(With input from agencies)